This invention relates generally to random access storage and retrieval apparatus and more specifically relates to a system for storage of a plurality of microfilm cartridges, and for retrieval and projection of selected cartridges and film frames thereof.
Enormous volumes of information are currently stored on microfilm, which most commonly is in reel form and maintained upon distinct unit packages, or so-called "cartridges". While this mode of information storage has resulted in an enormous diminution in volume of shelf space devoted to previous collection of corresponding hard copy, i.e., the original documents, it has been found in practice that retrieval of information from such microfilm records can present most serious difficulties.
By way of a most pointed example: U.S. patent specifications are currently maintained at a plurality of geographic locations, on microfilm cartridges, each cartridge of which may include several hundred or more successive U.S. patents. While this system enables information which prior thereto had occupied hundreds of feet of shelf space to be maintained in relatively small and compact filing cabinets, retrieval of hard copy output equivalent to a specified U.S. patent is a very laborious and time-consuming task, involving multiple operations, which are required to be physically performed by a party interested in obtaining the mentioned material.
Thus, the individual cartridge must first be located by the seeker of a given patent; the cartridge must then be removed from its storage place, laboriously installed at a spaced microfilm viewer, the film threaded with some difficulty, and with great care the frames of interest on the film located. After viewing the material, or producing hard copy output if desired of the selected frames, the cartridge must be rewound by manual direction, thereupon manually removed from the viewing or reproduction machine, and manually replaced n its proper position in the storage cabinet.
It will be clear from the foregoing that where a variety of successive documents are of interest, the steps involved become extremely difficult; and indeed, the advantages gained in reduction of storage space are often offset by the gross inconvenience involved in obtaining hard copy output, or in viewing microfilm frames of interest.
From time to time efforts have been made to automate the foregoing operations. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,456,817 to C. A. Irazoqui, for example, a random access storage and retrieval system is disclosed, which has possible application to storage and retrieval of microfilm cartridges. By and large, however, the system disclosed in this patent, as well as in other publications and the like, have proved to be complex in design, costly and relatively lacking in ease of operation and dependability. Accordingly, a need has long existed and continues to exist for a dependable and efficient system, capable not only of randomly retrieving selected microfilm cartridges and selected microfilm cartridges and selected frames thereof, but also of readily projecting the selected output to provide a visual display of same, or hard copy output equivalent.
In accordance with the foregoing, it may be regarded as an object of the present invention, to provide a microfilm cartridge storage and retrieval system, which is capable of storing in compact fashion large numbers of microfilm cartridges, and of rapidly retrieving a random selected such cartridge, and further thereupon projecting selected frames of the said retrieved cartridge for viewing or for reproduction of hard copy or the like.
It is a further object of the present invention, to provide apparatus of the above character, which is of compact and efficient design, which may therefore be produced at relatively low cost, and which by virtue of its simplicity is of high dependability in operation.